So a few months ago an old friend of mine and I were talking about campfire cooking. We go family camping every year and want to upgrade our cooking game.
So a practise was in order. We arranged a June weekend date when we were all free and both our families traipsed up to my permission woodland with a plan to cook a campfire meal for 8 people and experiment with a hangi.
First the hangi, we didn’t have river rocks and are on dense clay. The weather had baked the clay hard so we cheated and scraped a hole with the mini-digger.
We lit a large fire in The hole with ash and hornbeam until we had a good bed of coals.
Then we layered grass over the coals, put a pine round we cut and soak in water on top of that and then the pork wrapped in to foil and a hessian sack soaked in water.Then we buried the lot. 3 hours later we dug it up again and crackled the rind by the fire.
It worked very well considering the absence of rocks, the clay held the heat for hours!
We also cooked beef ribs, couscous, ratatouille, baked bread, and grilled some other veg and made 2 different sauces.
Quite the feast.
Burnt the bread but it can’t all go to plan every time!
Yum yum
The kitchen
Myself (green) and my chum Steve (blue)
Final menu was
- salt rubbed rib of beef
- hangi cooked pork with a honey, leek and apple sauce or chimichurri sauce
- couscous with roasted veg
- ratatouille
- grilled aubergine and courgette
- warm courgette and leek slaw
- bread
Was delicious, going to be doing a lot more campfire cooking from now on, I loved it!
Ed
So a practise was in order. We arranged a June weekend date when we were all free and both our families traipsed up to my permission woodland with a plan to cook a campfire meal for 8 people and experiment with a hangi.
First the hangi, we didn’t have river rocks and are on dense clay. The weather had baked the clay hard so we cheated and scraped a hole with the mini-digger.
We lit a large fire in The hole with ash and hornbeam until we had a good bed of coals.
Then we layered grass over the coals, put a pine round we cut and soak in water on top of that and then the pork wrapped in to foil and a hessian sack soaked in water.Then we buried the lot. 3 hours later we dug it up again and crackled the rind by the fire.
It worked very well considering the absence of rocks, the clay held the heat for hours!
We also cooked beef ribs, couscous, ratatouille, baked bread, and grilled some other veg and made 2 different sauces.
Quite the feast.
Burnt the bread but it can’t all go to plan every time!
Yum yum
The kitchen
Myself (green) and my chum Steve (blue)
Final menu was
- salt rubbed rib of beef
- hangi cooked pork with a honey, leek and apple sauce or chimichurri sauce
- couscous with roasted veg
- ratatouille
- grilled aubergine and courgette
- warm courgette and leek slaw
- bread
Was delicious, going to be doing a lot more campfire cooking from now on, I loved it!
Ed
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